Slotkin (D) Won’t Say Whether She Endorses Rashida Tlaib

Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.) did not respond last week when she was asked whether she would endorse one of her fellow Michigan Democrats, Rep. Rashida Tlaib.

“Congresswoman Slotkin, will you be endorsing Rashida Tlaib for her reelection?” a man asked in a video recorded on Labor Day in Detroit.

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Slotkin smiled and said “yeah” when the man said her name, but she did not respond to his question. She proceeded to walk away and ignored him, talking to two women with her who were wearing campaign shirts. The video was tweeted by Matthew Foldi of the Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC.

In May, Tlaib’s comments about the Holocaust earned her criticism from across the political spectrum. She described how she feels a “calming feeling” when she thinks about the Holocaust because her Palestinian ancestors wanted to help Jews. In reality, Palestinian leaders cooperated with the Nazis during the Holocaust and then declared total war on Israel immediately following its independence in 1948.

“There’s always kind of a calming feeling, I always tell folks,” Tlaib said. “When I think of the livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people’s passports. And just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews post-the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors—Palestinians—who lost their land and some lost their lives, their holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time, and I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that in many ways. But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away.”

Tlaib has also supported the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement to delegitimize the Jewish state.

Slotkin, who is Jewish, supported a resolution passed by House Democrats that condemned anti-Semitism and other forms of hate, which came after Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) made a series of anti-Semitic comments. Slotkin did not, however, condemn the two of them specifically, saying that Republicans were turning their comments into an issue in order to get money from Jewish donors.

In August, Tlaib was barred from entering Israel because of her support for BDS, although she was later granted, on humanitarian grounds, a visit to see her grandmother. She chose not to make that trip, claiming it was under “oppressive conditions.”